Undergraduate - UnitLAW5146 - Copyright and designs

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered, or view unit timetables.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Law
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2014 (Day)

Synopsis

Intellectual property I: copyright and designs focuses on two important forms of intellectual property. Learn why we have copyright law, its international framework, what it covers, whether it exists in any given scenario, whether it has been infringed and the possible consequences of such infringement. Then examine Australia's designs law, which protects the visual appearance of manufactured goods, with a focus on the overlap between copyright and designs protection. Throughout, there will be an emphasis on current legal issues and the relationships between these rights and other parts of IP law.

Outcomes

Upon completion of this unit students should be able to:

Explain the policies and objectives underlying the copyright and designs law regimes of intellectual property protection;
Critically evaluate those policies and objectives and relate them to proposals for law reform;
Illustrate their understanding of the law by advising authors, designers and other creators, as well as users of material created by such persons, as to their rights and liabilities under copyright and designs laws;
Understand and describe the features of the international rules governing the protection of copyright and designs.
Evaluate the impact of technological change on the formulation and protection of the rights studied; and
Apply their case analysis and statutory interpretation skills to complex factual scenarios.

Assessment

Take-home examination: 100%
OR
Assignment (1000 words): 20% and take-home examination: 80%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Rebecca Giblin

Workload requirements

Three hours of lectures per week

Prerequisites

For students in the LLB Hons course:
Pre-requisites: Foundations of Law, Criminal Law 1, Public Law & Statutory Interpretation, Torts, Contract A , Contract B, Property A, Constitutional Law; Co-requisites Equity, Corporations Law

For students in the LLB course:
Pre-requisites: LAW1101 Introduction to Legal Reasoning; LAW 1104 Research and Writing.

In addition, students may find it useful to study 'Introduction to Intellectual Property' prior to taking Copyright and Designs. However, this is not a pre-requisite and there is little overlap between the two units.